Bluff City Pawn (25 page)

The cop confiscated the gun but he didn’t witness the taking, and Harlan will tell his story and not get turned. Huddy knows this because, unlike the policeman, he was there when they were brothers playing in Shelby Forest (knew every corner of those woods), rock fights and setting small fires, no one around and then a game warden crossing the open field, Harlan about to run when Huddy quick-grabbed a fistful, the warden at the near edge and cutting into the woods and coming toward them, and Harlan struggling to get away, Huddy clinching for Harlan to go nowhere. The warden approached and they waited and didn’t move as he surveyed the dark spots on the ground. “What’s happened here?” the warden asked. Arms at their sides, sleeves touching, hand-me-down shirts that were secondhand when Joe first wore ’em. The truth at Huddy’s lips—his mouth full but blank—when Harlan stepped ahead, Harlan younger but faster with false words. “We was playing over there,” Harlan said, pointing away to a far end, “and we smelled smoke so we run over.” The warden high above them, but Harlan somehow equal for standing tall over burnt twigs. Huddy watched a ten-year-old and a uniformed man in a staredown. And the warden shifted to Huddy and asked again and even though Harlan’s campfire lie was nonsense and Huddy felt responsible, he repeated it. Because he couldn’t let his little brother outdare him, and the truth wouldn’t correct Harlan but make a mess of where he’d first stepped, even if Huddy felt lesser for saying what Harlan had said before. Huddy had their mama’s lighter in his pocket and he needed to explain the reason before he was searched—maybe say they set this one fire, after they stamped out the others—because the warden saw through their words. But the warden frowned and breathed heavily and shook his head at the blackened piles, just burns on ground where property wasn’t built and nothing grew. The questioning ended. The warden switched authority figures. Kids being kids, and it was time to minister, to teach an elementary lesson. “Boys,” he told them, “when you done something stupid, the easiest thing to remember is the truth.” He opened his hands, showed his palms. “So you can always pull the truth out.” Huddy listened to the message and hid his eyes—he wanted to say he had another brother on the other side of him—and then he gave a weak nod which Harlan missed from the corner of his eye, but Huddy hoped would mean an apology for harming the nearby land. The warden nodded back at only him, which was visible to Harlan, and Huddy was thankful for getting favored, for the man registering his difference. But he was ashamed for surrendering an apology he couldn’t help, as if he’d said sorry outright. The warden waved a fatherly hand to grant their release. And Huddy and Harlan walked the same path out of the woods and then ran loose across the field and back home, and Huddy felt like they’d been sentenced and were up against a wall when a guardian gave them a reprieve, and Harlan laughed at being let go, amazed at beating a grown-up who knew the truth but couldn’t get them to say what wasn’t seen, a game of hide-and-seek where your secrets never surfaced, and your denials always deceived.

The sergeant only knows Harlan once, a few hours of one day, but Huddy knows other incidents and history, his beginning lies, knows what he’ll say now as if it were an old episode coming back, a memory safely remembered. He trusts that Harlan will lie, depends upon it, and he’ll use Harlan’s version to cover his own mistake. Huddy will give not his own story, not some other side of it, but Harlan’s.

“I got two AKs here,” he says, matter-of-factly, looking back to the place he got caught prior, “but they’re both semi-auto.”

“Let’s go look,” the sergeant says, faceless, and Huddy watches his arms unfold.

Huddy takes him inside, through the double doors leading to the darker storeroom, down an aisle flanked by shelves crowded with hardware and cheap sets, equipment and instruments, other people’s things or Huddy’s or soon to be, the cement floor lined with oily machines, and then to the gun locker. He keys the hockey-puck lock, swings open the heavy-hinged doors and steps to the gun racks and stands at attention. Two AKs side by side, the third one off the books and off in Harlan’s hands, Harlan not knowing it was full-auto until he fired it, touched the trigger and got a burst, the recoil carrying the gun upward, went from shooting straight to shooting up at the sky. Dogs barking, the Wolf River filled with echoing combat noise, target shooting that sounds like a military operation, and Harlan’s legs wobbly and his eyes twitching, but his thoughts now clear on why Huddy didn’t log it in.
You paid for it but you can’t sell it, so let’s see what I can do.
Reloading another magazine and squaring his stance, his legs spread and shoulders leaning in so he’s steady on the gun, bringing the weight to him, the can he’s just finished a long-range target on a tree stump, Harlan squeezing and the bullets burying into the dirt behind. Another beer, another can set up afar, more lightning rounds blasted, and Wow, this weapon, all that energy pushing through it, the next magazine emptied and Harlan’s indestructible, the power in his hands, the stump drilled and the target hit and zinging, the gunfire rattling through the deep woods and volleying out, a dispatcher answering distress calls about what must be the local militia engaged in training exercises, a mother crying about her kid on a river-rafting trip, a veteran sitting quiet on a lawn chair and he hears rapid fire, perfectly timed, and it’s wartime again, the surrounding miles in ringing earshot, there’s a shooter in the woods, a machine-gun psycho in a city park, an artilleryman gone AWOL, but Harlan’s mind is remote and soundproof.

Two AKs on a full rack. Nothing absent, so the gun couldn’t’ve been stored here. The configuration encourages Huddy: the rack a complete story with no missing pieces. Just repeat it. The sergeant’s eyes move across the lineup.

This here’s my brother’s gun, but he don’t know I got it. He don’t even know it’s his.

Huddy hears Harlan as if he were hearing himself.

“These are my AKs.”

“What about what your brother was firing?”

Huddy shrugs innocently. That third AK is a mystery. He’s only sure about two, and two’s his limit. “These are what’s mine.” He knows he’s crossed a line to walk back to Harlan, and the sergeant is even more suspicious because he’s interrogated Harlan before coming to him.

“What are you saying?” the sergeant says, after peering at the guns.

He’s confirming that Harlan took it before it came into the shop, because that’s what Harlan said. A loyal thief, he’ll steal a gun and surrender it but not a brother. Caught red-handed, the gun leaving Harlan, the sergeant’s hands taking hold, and Huddy is seized by fingerprints. Panic inside him, but don’t signal outward. His shoulder blades squeeze, heat surges across his face. He stares at a corner, fixes himself. If they ran prints, he can say his touches came from the gun-room inspection.

“He helped me load the collection in. He must’ve slipped the gun out for hisself. Before it came here.” One added word to change the sequence—Harlan took the gun
before
—to avoid incrimination. A lie, but more than half-true, completely true minus the one word. He’s matched Harlan’s account, told an accurate lie. He tries to read the sergeant but there’s no impression, the stubbled face not moving. “My brother may have been upset about me and my other brother buying them.”

“Your other brother.”

That’s right. Huddy gives up the name. He watches the sergeant take down the information on his notepad. He wishes he could add a brother to every answer. Ten, fifteen brothers—older brothers and new ones till his own name hid inside them like an alias, and what he’d done wrong couldn’t be found. “He may have been angry about not getting a share.”

“Harlan.”

Huddy nods because he is telling the truth. Watches the sergeant write another note.

“And so he walked off with your gun. Without either brother seeing it.”

Huddy spreads his palms in both directions, at the other racks and the number of guns all over shelves and different levels and along every plank. “It was a big collection.” He nods again, another correct answer.

The sergeant turns behind him and his nostrils flare, as if the mowers on the ground were doused in gasoline. He steps out of the locker and scans the room, the property everywhere, and then he looks past the personal items on the long rows of shelving, to the walls, the length and width and corner edges, surveying dimensions and angles up and down as if he were measuring the floor plan. “You won’t mind if ATF conducts a compliance investigation.” It’s time to pass the case up to the feds.

“Of course not,” Huddy says, he’ll cooperate fully, because if he objected they’d push harder, and the audit would feel like a raid.

ATF isn’t here yet, but Huddy feels them so close he wouldn’t be surprised if the sergeant could wave agents in from the back wall. They’re waiting for their directive, poised to take over. They’ve already read the report that the sergeant hasn’t written up yet. Huddy’s mind pulls backward to Harlan’s arrest and forward to the audit, his mind in two places but his eyes only in this small locked room.

Twelve

He arrives at the
end of dinnertime. He drove here, but he feels like he’s been dropped off. He’s home, but he’s still over there, separated, and he walks through one room to get to another, to stand beside the table and see what his wife is having on her plate.

“Da,” Cody says, and Huddy smiles, his son saying almost words.

“Hi,” he says.

“Ieee,” he hears back, as he heads to the kitchen, fills his dinner plate at the stove, sets his pistol atop the fridge, grabs a beer below, and rejoins them.

“Did my brother call?”

“Which one?”

The one that got caught, he thinks, but he just says, “Either.” He could call Joe to see if he’s learned about Harlan, but he’s talked enough brothers today.

“Something wrong?” she asks.

“Why?”

“You ain’t sitting down.”

He sits across from Cody, who’s strapped in a high chair, Christie in between. After lying to the police, maybe he should rehearse his lines for the feds. Or maybe he should relieve the pressure of the truth, make it easier to lie all day tomorrow. He cracks the can open, considers which talk. And then he tells what Harlan did—he watches her fork pull from her mouth in disbelief—and what he didn’t do, and how Harlan’s lie will be his alibi.

“He fired one of your guns in the Wolf frickin’ River?”

“It’s an all-time fuck-up.”

“Ah ba ba.” The baby points at his food, at some complaint or demand.

“What’s he saying?”

“Beats me.”

“Abba-dabba,” Huddy says.

“Something like that.”

“Ah hop,” Cody says, his tiny arm stretching across the tray and the food beyond reach.

“That means he needs help.”

Huddy rises and edges the fruit chunk over.

“So where’s the fuck-up now?” she asks.

In a box. And if Harlan wasn’t put in a cell or cage or wherever he’s stuck, where would he be? Not back at the pawnshop. He’s test-fired a machine gun that Huddy can’t sell—might as well take it to a gun show, sell it out in the parking lot to a buyer who, surprise, is undercover. Win the award for stupid, except he’s already won it for the woods.

“What are you gonna do?”

“I told you,” Huddy says, and he eats his meal. “It’s Harlan’s problem.”

“How’s it just Harlan’s problem?”

He doesn’t answer, sips instead, clenches his mouth so it’s airtight.

“Boo,” the baby says, his lips pursed.

“He’s trying to say
spoon
.”

“I figured,” Huddy says, and he nods at the clutched utensil.

“So you’re gonna break the law?” She eyes him, then their son, but Huddy doesn’t, just her.

“There ain’t no point cooperating. It’s paying for something I didn’t do. They want me to tell the truth so they can take my guns—and they ain’t once gonna ask for no asking price. Well, I aim to sell what’s mine.”

She gets up, removes her plate. He takes a bite, and another and he’s so hungry he devours half his serving, and he’s already planning for seconds. He tears the meat from the bone. He hears food scraped into the garbage, hears the sink run, the dishwasher tray sliding out, the door banging shut. Done with cleanup, but the floor creaks as she paces. He chews, swallows. Needs more. Cody smears his leftovers, draws arcs and circles. He says words and fake ones.

She returns, wipes her hands.

“He’s talking up a storm,” Huddy says, but now it’s her turn not to look, to only talk at him.

“Did I ever tell you about my cousin Bobby? The car thief?”

“No,” Huddy says, studying her features. He watches her focus, her face serious but also relaxed.

“He had this scheme. Steal cars, drive them from Arkansas to Florida. He was hooked in with—I don’t know what you’d call it. Some syndicate. Crime ring. Anyway, it was big money. And he decided he was gonna make seven hundred fifty thousand, not a million, and that’s how he wouldn’t get caught. ’Cause million was the first number he thought of, so when he lowered it to seven-five, he knew he was being safe. As long as he didn’t get greedy for that extra money.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing. Happy ending. He stopped at seven-fifty. Living on a houseboat is what happened.”